Navigating Brain Injury Together
Brain or Shine is designed to help individuals, and their families, friends, and work colleagues, understand how to live with the life changing effects of traumatic injuries and hidden disabilities.
Our aim is to ensure that individuals and their families don’t suffer the same way as we did in those early days by providing you with tools, webinars, membership programmes and a strong online community. Our support is from both sides, Mark as the survivor and Jules as the carer.
Do you find living with a Brain Injury a struggle?
Are you a Brain Injury survivor who has difficulty getting family and friends to understand what it’s like having a hidden BI disability? Or do you have a loved one, or a friend who has experienced a life-changing traumatic injury?
We are here to help individuals and their families rebuild their lives and get back on track after surviving a brain injury. Find tools and strategies that we’ve used to be able to cope better with BI and live life on your own terms.
How We Can Support You
Welcome to Brain or Shine, where we give an insight into living with a brain injury.
Following Mark’s brain injury, he was discharged quickly, feeling that it was a miracle that he’d survived. ‘Live your life as normal’, was the advice and that’s what he attempted to do. There was no immediate support, very little warning of the side effects and, in fact, not even a leaflet to read.
Medical professionals are wonderful people who have a wealth of knowledge and an immense amount of care. Sadly, they are working in high pressured, system driven environments and usually short staffed. This leads to little time to spend on aftercare, which is when the patient probably needs it the most.
At Brain or Shine, we’re not medically qualified but we have tools and resources that individuals and families can use immediately. Jules is a qualified NLP Master Practitioner (Behavioural Psychology) and studied CBT in mindfulness, which we draw upon to offer coping strategies that may help you positively change the way you think. Our life would’ve been a lot easier if we could turn back the clock and have this knowledge and support from day one.
What Do We Offer?
First off, we’re not qualified medical professionals, we’ve simply gained all of this knowledge through lived experience and from peer-to-peer support groups. It’s helped us to share tools that have worked for us, both as a high-functioning brain injury survivor and a carer and loving partner.
Of course, not everything will work for everyone as brain injury doesn’t have a one size fits all solution. However, we’re pretty confident that there will be many things that will help. So, take a look below and let us know your success stories.
Webinars
We will be running a rolling 12-part series of informative webinars. Each webinar will touch upon a different issue or concern around brain injuries, and then we will share our advice on how to deal with it.
Podcast
Our podcasts focus on tools and topics to help both sufferers, carers and families. If you enjoy listening to podcasts or lead a busy life, these short episodes will suit you when you are out on the go.
Facebook Group
Our Facebook group is a community for brain injury survivors, family and friends. We encourage you to share your story, journey and express any feelings you are having, no matter whether they are good or bad.
Follow us on Instagram for quick tips, news and motivation. We'll also keep you updated on what's coming up next across Brain or Shine so you don't miss out on any new resources or programmes.
Brain Bites
Our blogs are extended versions of our podcasts and are aimed at people who prefer to read or get distracted when listening to podcasts. Please feel free to share our blogs with your friends or family.
Membership
By becoming a member you will gain access to our game changing programmes. These are ideal for mid to high functioning brain injury survivors, their family and friends and also employers and fellow employees.
What Does a Brain Injury Look Like?
When Mark sustained a brain injury, the initial diagnosis was very scary and it involved lots of medical terms. However, after being signed off after eight weeks, there was little support available.
The impression given was, that after six months, life would return to normal. This wasn’t the case!
We had to deal with the questions such as:
❓Why can’t Mark concentrate on simple tasks?
❓How come he’s changed from laid-back to stressed?
❓Why is he always tired?
❓Where have his social skills gone?
❓Why can’t he tell us what’s going on in his head?
Six years after the brain injury, Mark was still struggling emotionally and had become a shell of his former self. Jules found it difficult to communicate with him and to understand why this had happened and what to do.
Simple day-to-day tasks were difficult, memory was poor, and anxiety was high. However, Mark looked fine. So, why is his confidence so low?
Common Myths To Heal Brain Injury
👉🏼 Recovery takes 6-12 months & then you’ll be back to normal.
👉🏼 If you look fine then you are fine.
👉🏼 If you can listen to heavy metal music live then you can easily sit in a room and talk to three people.
👉🏼 If you have a great night’s sleep, you’ll feel fabulous and focused the next day.
👉🏼 Everyone feels tired and forgets stuff so it’s okay to experience that with a brain injury.
👉🏼Take loads of meds and you’ll be fine.
👉🏼 You’re making the tiredness up, you’re okay really.
These are simply not true and, after spending a number of years searching for answers, these answers and knowledge helped us to move forward in life.
Read Our Personal Story
One of the biggest major steps on the road to recovery was to publish our story. It was emotional and extremely hard to recount the hurt and pain that brain injury had caused in our relationship but, writing became cathartic and helped us to piece things together.
Our book, What The Hell Just Happened? has helped thousands of individuals and families understand how brain injury affects a relationship and give hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Shortly we’ll have a programme available to support anyone wishing to write their own story too.
